Big Picture Science – Meet Your Robot Barista

Move over Roomba. Café robots are the latest in adorable automation. And they may be more than a fad. As robots and artificial intelligence enter the workforce, they could serve up more than machine-made macchiato. Digital workers are in training to do a wide variety jobs. Will humans be handed the mother of all pink slips?

We sip lattes in a robot café and contemplate the future of work. Some say the workplace will have more machines than people, while others maintain that A.I. will augment, not replace, human workers.

Meanwhile, future intelligent automation may not come from Silicon Valley. Why China wants to become the global center for A.I.

Plus, NASA’s first bipedal humanoid robot – Valkyrie, a prototype of a construction worker for use on Mars – teaches us that moving like a human is not as easy as it looks.